Scouring the planet for breeding solutions

Bindiganavile Vivek

Bindiganavile Vivek (pictured) is a maize breeder working at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Hyderabad, India. For the past five years, Vivek and his team have been developing drought-tolerant germplasm for Asia using relatively new molecular-breeding approaches – marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS), applied in a genomewide selection (GWS) mode. Their work in the Asian Maize Drought-Tolerance (AMDROUT) project is implemented through GCP’s Maize Research Initiative, with Vivek as the AMDROUT Principal Investigator.

Driven by consumer demand for drought-tolerant maize varieties in Asia, the AMDROUT research team has focussed on finding suitable drought-tolerant donors from Africa and Mexico. Most of these donors are white-seeded, yet in Asia, market and consumer preferences predominantly favour yellow-seeded maize. Moreover, maize varieties are very site-specific and this poses yet another challenge. Clearly, breeding is needed for any new target environments, all the while also with an eye on pronounced market and consumer preferences.

(1) Amazing maize and its maze of colour. Maize comes in many colours and hues. (2) Steeped in saffron: from this marvellous maize mix and mosaic, the flavour in Asia favours yellow maize.

Stalked by drought, tough to catch, but still the next big thing

Around 80 per cent of the 19 million hectares of maize in South and Southeast Asia is grown under rainfed conditions, and is therefore susceptible to drought, when rains fail. Tackling drought can therefore provide excellent returns to rainfed maize research and development investments. As we shall see later, Vivek and his team have already made significant progress in developing drought-tolerant maize.

The stark reality of drought is illustrated in this warning sign on a desiccated drought-scorched landscape, showing the severity of drought in Asia

But they are after a tough target: drought tolerance is dodgy since it is a highly polygenic trait, making it difficult for plant scientists to pinpoint genes for the trait (see this video with an example from rice in Africa). In other words, to make a plant drought-tolerant, many genes have to be incorporated into a new variety. As one would expect, the degree of difficulty is directly proportional to the number of genes involved. In the private-sector seed industry, MARS (PDF) has been successfully used in achieving rapid progress towards high grain yield under optimal growth conditions. Therefore, a similar approach could be used to speed up the process of introducing drought tolerance into Asian crops – the reason why the technique is now being used by this project.

More than India: the AMDROUT project also comprises research teams in China, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines and Vietnam. In this photo taken during the December 2010 annual project meeting in Penang, Malaysia, the AMDROUT team assessed the progress made by each country team, and team members were trained in data management and drought phenotyping. They also realised that there was a need for more training in genomic selection, and did something about it, as we shall see in the next photo. Pictured here, left to right: Luo Liming, Tan jing Li, Villamor Ladia, V Vengadessan, Muhammad Adnan, Le Quy Kha, Pichet Grudloyma, Vivek, IS Singh, Dan Jeffers (back), Eureka Ocampo (front), Amara Traisiri and Van Vuong.

The rise of maize: clear chicken-and-egg sequence…

Vivek says that the area used for growing maize in India has expanded rapidly in recent years. In some areas, maize is in fact displacing sorghum and rice. And the maize juggernaut rolls beyond India to South and Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, for example, the government is actively promoting the expansion of maize acreage, again displacing rice. Other countries involved in the push for maize include China, Indonesia and The Philippines.

So what’s driving this shift in cropping to modern drought-tolerant maize? The curious answer to this question lies in food-chain dynamics. According to Vivek, the dramatic increase in demand for meat – particularly poultry – is the driver, with 70 percent of maize produced going to animal feed, and 70 percent of that going into the poultry sector alone.

GCP gave us a good start… the AMDROUT project laid the foundation for other CIMMYT projects”

Show and tell: posting and sharing dividends

As GCP approaches its sunset in December 2014, Vivek reports that all the AMDROUT milestones have been achieved. Good progress has been made in developing early-generation yellow drought-tolerant inbred lines. The use of MARS by the team – something of a first in the public sector – has proved to be useful. In addition, regional scientists have benefitted from broad training from experts on breeding trial evaluation and genomic selection (photo-story on continuous capacity-building). “GCP gave us a good start. We now need to expand and build on this,” says Vivek.

AMDROUT calls in on Cambridge for capacity building. AMDROUT country partners were at Cambridge University, UK, in March 2013, for training in quantitative genetics, genomic selection and association mapping. This was a second training session for the team, the first having been September 2012 in India. Pictured here, left to right – front row: Sri Sunarti, Neni Iriany, Hongmei Chen; middle row: Ian Mackay (Cambridge), Muhammad Azrai, Le Quy Kha, Artemio Salazar; back row: Roy Efendy, Alison Bentley (who helped organise, run and teach on the course, alongside Ian) and Suriphat Thaitad.AMDROUT country partners are from China’s Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS); the Indonesian Cereals Research Institute (ICERI); the Institute of Plant Breeding at the Unversity of Philppines at Los Baños (UPLB); Thailand’s Nakhon Sawan Field Crops Research Center (NSFCRC); Vietnam’s National Maize Research Institute (NMRI); and private-sector seed companies in India, such as Krishidhan Seeds.Curious on who proposed to whom for this AMDROUT–Cambridge get-together? We have the answer: a Cambridge callout announced the training, and AMDROUT answered by calling in, since course topics were directly relevant to AMDROUT’s research approach.

There is now also an International Maize Consortium for Asia (IMIC–Asia), coordinated by CIMMYT, comprising a group of 30 commercial companies (ranging from small to large; local to transnational). Through this consortium, CIMMYT is developing maize hybrids for specific environmental conditions, including drought. IMIC–Asia will channel and deploy the germplasms produced by AMDROUT and other projects, with a view to assuring impact in farmers’ fields.

Overall, Vivek’s experience with GCP has been very positive, with the funding allowing him to focus on the agreed milestones, but with adaptations along the way when need arose: Vivek says that GCP was open and flexible regarding necessary mid-course corrections that the team needed to make in their research.

But what next with GCP coming to a close? Outputs from the AMDROUT project will be further refined, tested and deployed through other projects such as Triple A, thus assuring product sustainability and delivery after GCP winds up.

As our Maize Research Initiative does not have a Product Delivery Coordinator, Vivek graciously stepped in to coordinate the maize research group at our General Research Meeting in 2013, for which we thank him yet again. Below are slides summing up the products from this research, and the status of the projects then.

I was forever inquisitive as to how things grew, and questioning when they didn’t grow well. I think it’s what got me interested in plant science.”
– Abdelbagi Ismail, Plant Physiologist and Principal Scientist, International Rice Research Institute.

Today, we talk to Abdel. His riveting voyage in plant science starts on the bountiful banks of the Nile, before we sail on to Asia’s ricelands. We’ll make a short stopover in USA for cowpeas and drought in between, then proceed to to our main meal of rice, spiced and seasoned with a strong dash of salt-and-P.

It’s not just about food, but also family: you’ll get to meet a sister Challenge Programme along the way. Intrigued? We hope so, so please do read on!

‘A’ for Abdel and agriculture – an early passion for plantsFrom a tender age, Abdel was fascinated by agriculture.

Growing up on a small family farm backing onto the banks of the Nile in the Northern State of Sudan, he helped his parents in tilling the land, sowing and harvesting.

Abdel reminisces, “It was a relaxing paradise with all types of fruit growing around you year-round. Working and living on a farm, I was forever inquisitive as to how things grew, and questioning when they didn’t grow well. I think it’s what got me interested in plant science.”

Armed with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Agricultural Sciences (agronomy, crop production, water relations) from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, Abdel moved to the University of California, Riverside, USA, for a PhD on drought tolerance in cowpeas.

“It was the first time I had ever left Africa, and it was a real eye-opener,” Abdel recalls. “It was a fantastic new page in my career too, as I was working with world-class professors and mentors. I chose to work on cowpeas because it is a hardy crop that can be grown in dry conditions which were – and still are – becoming more prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.” (you can take a sidetrack here, to see our research on cowpeas)

What interests me is how some societies have survived, and, in some cases, flourished because they invested in improving their plants and crops to adapt and adjust to weather adversities.”

Navigating away from the Nile, and discovering his nicheFor this native son of the Nile, this move was a watershed. It marked the start of a dedicated – and still ongoing – career quest to understand how plants can adapt to better tolerate extreme environmental stresses such as higher and lower temperatures, too much or too little water, salinity, and nutrient imbalances.

“Abiotic stresses have had, and continue to have, a major impact on human life, with some societies disappearing altogether because of changes in soils or climate,” says Abdel. “What interests me is how some societies have survived, and, in some cases, flourished because they invested in improving their plants and crops to adapt and adjust to weather adversities.”

From time immemorial, the communities around the Nile where Abdel spent his childhood are a prime example of this flourishing against adversity.

IRRI beckons, and nurturesIn 2000, Abdel accepted a position at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in The Philippines.

“I saw it as an opportunity to convert knowledge and scientific discoveries into resources that could help needy farmers,” explains Abdel.

Abdel confesses that when he joined IRRI, his intention was to stay for a short stint and then move on. But as he became more involved in his work, he felt IRRI offered him the best opportunity to build his career, and to contribute to global food-security issues.

“I’ve been here for 12 years now. IRRI really is a great place to grow as a person and a researcher, and to learn how to become a leader.”

Having GCP provide ongoing funding and support for public institutions to conduct a long-term project has been pivotal to the success of the project. It has given us all the security we need to focus on conducting the complex research required…”

Trailblazing for GCP : a much-needed dash of ‘salt-and-P’In 2004, Abdel proposed a collaborative project between nine different research organisations, across seven countries, to improve salt tolerance and phosphorus uptake efficiency in rice. The work was funded by a sister CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF).

This work caught – and held – GCP’s attention, because it sought to overcome a problem that negatively affects the lives of tens of thousands of rice growers around the world. The two resultant GCP-funded IRRI-led projects involved partners from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and USA’s University of California, Davis. Globally, more than 15 million hectares of ricelands are saline, and more than one-third of all ricelands are phosphorus-deficient, hitting poor communities hardest.

In the nine years since, and together with his colleagues and partners, Abdel has developed the proposal into a productive and coherent suite of interconnected projects: he has managed and overseen most of the progress made during the discovery of the genes associated with salinity tolerance (Saltol) and phosphorus uptake (Pup1), and their insertion into well-known rice varieties that farmers in Bangladesh, Indonesia and The Philippines know and trust.

It’s all about rice: salt tolerance (Saltol) ‘meets’ phosphorus uptake (Pup1) in Bangladesh. Abdel is on the extreme right. Next to him is Sigrid Heuer, Principal Investigator of the ‘Pup1’ work.

Keeping the faith, and going where no rice has gone before…A long-term horizon helps, since, just like art, science cannot be hurried: “Having GCP provide ongoing funding and support for public institutions to conduct a long-term project has been pivotal to the success of the project,” Abdel emphasises.

“It has given us all the security we need to focus on conducting the complex research required to advance our knowledge about these genes, then breed and develop popular varieties containing then. In some cases, we have developed lines with doubled yields, and grown rice in areas where it has never been grown before because the land was too saline.”

For Abdel, such achievements are heartening as they provide farmers with greater food and income security, which in turn improves their and their community’s livelihoods.

“It brings a smile to my face whenever I think about how our work helps to produce higher-yielding crops for poverty-stricken countries whose farmers often can only afford to grow one crop per year,” says Abdel sincerely.

Abdel continues to build upon, and has even employed, partners he has met through the GCP project…”We want to improve their capacity to take up new breeding techniques, such as the use of molecular markers, which can reduce the time it takes to breed new varieties from six to 10 years to two to three years…”

Continually building on the bestSo what’s in store for the future?

Having discovered the Saltol gene and developed experimental lines, his team is now training breeders from country breeding programmes on how they can successfully breed for salt tolerance and tolerance of other abiotic stresses using their own popular varieties, thereby fortifying popular varieties with these much-needed tolerance traits.

“We want to improve their capacity to take up new breeding techniques, such as the use of molecular markers, which can reduce the time it takes to breed new varieties from six to 10 years to two to three years,” reveals Abdel. “This will allow them to breed for crops quicker, in response to ever-changing and extreme climate conditions.”

As for his other projects with IRRI, Abdel continues to build upon, and has even employed, partners he has met through the GCP project to help him with his Stress tolerant rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project.

GCP helped IRRI attract support from other funders…”

Going further, faster, together… five and counting, still learning, and the future looks brightSTRASA is almost five years old and has another five years left to run.

“GCP helped IRRI to attract additional support from other funders, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to start STRASA, which seeks to support the development and distribution of stress-tolerant varieties in Africa and South Asia,” Abdel explains.

Abdel’s parting words? “I’m still committed to understand how plants can be manipulated to adapt to, and better tolerate, extreme environmental stresses, which seems more feasible today than it has ever been before.”

Links

For an early history of Abdel’s work (2005–2006) see pp 36–40 here, and pp 26–28 here